William Mundy (composer)

The Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace where William Mundy spent most of his career.

William Mundy (c. 1529–1591) was an Renaissance English composer of sacred music[1] and father of composer John Mundy.[2]

Life

He was the son of Thomas Mundy, a musician and sexton of the London church St Mary-at-Hill.[3] William Mundy married Mary Alcock and had two sons, John Mundy, an organist and composer, and Stephen Mundy, a gentleman of the household to James I and Charles I.[2]

In 1543, William Mundy was head chorister of Westminster Abbey, until his voice broke at puberty. He was appointed deputy to St Martin, Ludgate in 1547, and from 1548–1558, Mundy served as Parish Clerk for the church of St Mary-at-Hill in London (his father Thomas' employer).[4] Mundy was appointed Vicar choral[5] to the Chapel Royal in 1562 or 1563, and remained in that position for twenty-seven years until his death around early October of 1591.[4] [note 1]

Works

Coming of age during the reign of Henry VIII, Mundy's career spanned much of England's Tudor Dynasty, and reflected the changes in church music that accompanied the religious turmoil of that period.[3] Mundy's earliest surviving works, a Magnificat, Mass Apon the Square I, Mass Apon the Square 2, a Alleluia Post partum, a Alleluia Per te Dei, and a Kyrie, possibly date from the 1550s, and appear in the Gyffard Partbooks.[6]

One of Mundy's most famous works, the service setting, Oh Lord, the Maker of All Things, first published in Barnard's partbook (First Book of Selected Church Musick)[7] was—bizarrely—originally attributed to Henry VIII. Composer and and music historian Ernest Walker, held that particular contrapuntal service to be "one of the very finest of all written for the English ritual".[8]

Mundy's piece, Vox Patris caelestis, in the view of conductor and musicologist Peter Phillips, was written in the Catholic style and can thus be attributed to the reign of Queen Mary (1553–58).[9]

Some pieces, ascribed merely to "Mundy", may have been the work of either William Mundy, or his son John. These include six service settings, four complete anthems for mens voices, an anthem for a full choir (Blessed is God in All His Gifts), four incomplete anthems, and a secular work (Fie, fie my fate).[4]

Reputation among contemporaries

Though few records of Mundy's life remain, he was highly-regarded by his contemporaries. Thomas Morley in his 1597 Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke grouped Mundy in among the top English composers of the time, writing that "[...] those famous Englishmen who have been nothing inferior in Art to any of the a forenamed [continental composers], as Fairfax, Taverner, Sheppard, Mundy, White, Parsons, W. Byrde, and divers others, who never thought it a greater sacrilege to spurn against the Image of a Saint, than to take to perfect cords of one kind together."[10]

In 1563, when composer John Baldwin of Windsor wrote of the great musicians of the period, he included Mundy ("th'oulde", as opposed to his son John) writing: "I will begin with White, Sheppard, Tye, and Tallis; / Parsons, Giles, Mundy, th'oulde: one of the Queen's Pallis."[5] English Renaissance academic Robert Dow also praised Mundy in verse, writing: "Moon day: / As the light of the moon follows close on the sun / So you after Byrd, Mundy, next do come."[3]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Most sources cite 1591 as William Mundy year of death, but the Dictionary of National Biography suggests that the commonly-held 1591 date instead refers to the death of a relative—John Mundy.

References

  1. ↑ McComb, Todd (June 1994). "William Mundy". Classical Net. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Middleton, Louisa M. (1894). Lee, Sidney, ed. Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 39. Smith, Elder & Co. p. 304. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Roberston, Nicholas (1989). Sacred Choral Music by William Mundy (liner notes) (PDF). London: Hyperion Records. pp. 2–4. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Howe, Gerry. "The Music of William Mundy". Libris Research Website.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 W. H. Grattan Flood (1924). "New light on late Tudor composers. III. William Mundy". The Musical Times 65 (980): 894–895. doi:10.2307/911748.
  6. ↑ "Gyffard Partbooks (GB-Lbl Add. MS 17802)". DIAMM—Digital Archive of Medieval Music. King's College London. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
  7. ↑ Maitland, John Alexander Fuller (1894). Lee, Sidney, ed. Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 3. Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 238–239. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
  8. ↑ Walker, Ernest (1907). A History of Music in England. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. p. 48.
  9. ↑ Phillips, Peter (1980). "Allegri: Miserere; Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli; Mundy: Vox Patris caelestis (Liner Notes)". Hyperion Records. Retrieved 21 April 2015.
  10. ↑ Morley, Thomas (1597). Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke. London, UK: W. Randall / UNT Digital Library. p. 170.

External links

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